9. Nighthawks
Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, painted in 1942 as oil on canvas, is one of the most recognizable pieces of American artwork. Depicting a few diners in a brightly lit restaurant set amidst a dark, desolate city, it spoke to the sense of loneliness in a rapidly urbanizing American on the brink of joining a World War. The painting was an immediate hit, with the Art Institute of Chicago paying almost $50,000 in today’s money ($3,000 at the time) for its purchase only months after its completion.
Nighthawks was allegedly based on a diner in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Specifically, a diner at the intersection of 11th street and 7th avenue on an intersection known as Mulry Square. However, Hopper later clarified that he based the painting on an all-night coffee stand and expanded the scene into a full diner. He said, “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
It was Hopper’s wife, Josephine “Jo” Hopper who fought for the name of the painting. In a journal entry during the piece’s creation, she referred to one of the figures in the painting as a nighthawk. Later, in a letter to Edward’s sister she wrote, “Ed has just finished a very fine picture–a lunch counter at night with three figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it.”
